1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to envelope addressing and more particularly to method and apparatus for marking envelopes with a xerographic marking engine.
2. Background
Automated envelope addressing methods are known. The incentive to improve those methods varies in proportion to the number of envelopes to be addressed. The small volume entrepreneur can most economically accomplish mailings with a typewriter and an efficient secretary. When thousands of letters are to be mailed, however, time and cost constraints dictate the use of automatic envelope addressing techniques.
One prior art addressing technique is to first print a series or sequence of mailing addresses onto separate labels which then can be affixed to the packages or envelopes to be mailed. U.S. Pat. No. 3,647,602 entitled "Selective Article Labeling Control Form" to McGuire, for example, discloses a labeling machine which automatically applies labels to multiple articles. The printed labels in the form of label strips used by the '602 apparatus are generated separately by a label printing device which might comprise, for example, the apparatus disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,661,453 to McGuire et al. This second reference patent relates to a label printing apparatus wherein a label printer electrostatically prints a continuous strip of labels from individual master address cards. A finished label strip might then typically be utilized by the apparatus disclosed in the '602 patent to complete the addressing process. When electrostatic label printers such as that described in the '453 patent are utilized, the address information must first be printed or typed in a xerographically recognizable form so that it may be copied onto the labels. As disclosed in the '453 patent, this is normally accomplished by typing on white or light colored cards the address information and then xerographically copying those cards according to known xerographic techniques.
The above described process is certainly much quicker than individual typing of all address information onto the articles to be mailed, yet may not be the most efficient mailing technique depending on the particular application. The xerographic copying of address information onto individual labels requires that each time a different address is to be affixed to a label a different xerographically recognizable original must be typed or printed for use by the system. Additionally, any label printing system requires that an additional step, i.e. the affixing of the label to the document or package must take place prior to mailing.
When the item to be mailed is a large package or irregularly shaped object, the use of the above described system may be the most efficient way for addressing that article. For a regular shaped object such as an envelope, however, it would be advantageous to avoid the above described limitations encountered with a label printing system.
The IBM commercial ink jet printer has an envelope printing capability. This printer includes an envelope holder and envelope feeder which drives blank envelopes to an ink jet print station when the envelopes are printed directly without any intermediate label printing. This printer has no graphics capability, however, and involves a separate subsystem for handling envelopes. The IBM ink jet envelope printing technique does benefit from electronic storage of address data which represents an advance over the imaging of a master each time an envelope is printed.